When You Feel Inadequate as a Christian

The last time I was flying to Berlin, I got upgraded to business class. I did not deserve it. I did not pay for it. But I got to sit on nice seats, enjoy all the nice food, drinks, and other benefits of being in business class.

So it is with God. We don’t deserve to be saved. We don’t deserve to be “upgraded” to Heaven. But we still get to go there and enjoy all the benefits of it by His grace. We also don’t deserve to be filled with the Spirit and given all the spiritual gifts. We even don’t deserve to have a good life or good health. It’s all by his grace.

Whenever I don’t forget, I pray before writing an article. And when I ask for God’s help I often feel inadequate, since I feel like I don’t deserve His help. I instantly remember the last time I have sinned and that makes me feel inadequate to be even used for Christian ministry. I feel like I have to be more perfect to be used by God.

But my fiancé reminded me recently that I should not put my identity or trust in myself for the online ministry. I should put it in God.

Whenever I depend on my own abilities and try to set myself as an example for others – I am bound to fail eventually. But whenever I am being honest about my weaknesses and I let all that I do point to Christ – then that takes the pressure off of me to be the perfect example of a Christian and instead point others to the One who is really perfect.

God uses imperfect people to point to His perfection.

Whenever I don’t commit any “big” sins and I am a good girl for a long time, I almost feel like I have the right for good health, God’s help, all prayers answered, and just a good life.

But whenever I do fall and the sinful nature comes out, I start to realize again that I don’t deserve good treatment no matter how I behave or how good in my own eyes I look. Sometimes it even feels like God allows us to fall every now and then just to remind us that we still have sinful nature and we still need Him.

God uses our sins to humble us.

And when we do get humbled by our own sinful nature, then we not only get closer to God in the process (instead of thinking that we can do it on our own now), but we also are more ready to point others to Christ instead of to ourselves.

In reality, all Christian are hypocrites. Me included. We don’t do what we preach. And we can’t – given we preach the Bible. God’s Word sets such a high standard for all of us that no human being can reach.

I try. And I might succeed for some time. But in one area or another, I am bound to fail at some point. That’s just part of being human and part of God cultivating character in us by putting us in different situations to test us and help us mature.

There is no growth without failure.

There are no perfect people in the world. We just need to push through that shame and guilt that comes from being imperfect human and keep on serving God!

There are no perfect Christians in this world. No Christian that I look up to is perfect. So I guess that it’s okay that I am not perfect either. We should look up to Christ, not Christians anyway.